


A Rustblood's Guide To Aliens

by CloudDreamer



Category: Hiveswap
Genre: Friendship, Implied/Referenced Torture, Nonromantic, One Shot, i played hiveswap, i swear this was intended to be fluffy, it rules, mostly angst with minor fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-30 22:36:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12118683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer
Summary: in which joey and xefros have a chat.





	A Rustblood's Guide To Aliens

**Author's Note:**

> it was supposed to be fluff, guys.

"so..." Joey said as the deercat lusus she'd nicknamed Clarissa slowed to a stop. She climbed off and held out a hand to Xefros. The strange alien-- he'd called himself a troll at one point, hadn't he--flinched but grabbed it anyway. His gray face turned a faint red shade. Clarissa settled down onto the ground and nudged them together. Joey sat down on the hard ground, delicately pulling Xefros with her. It felt like dirt but it was a strange color. The two moons that illuminated this planet were pretty, in an odd way. "what now?"

"im not Xactly sure. how do aliens sleep?" His fingers trembled and Joey let go of them. He nervously picked at his red fingernails. Joey examined her own nails in response. The perfectly applied green polish was beginning to crack and peel away. Bruises from where the key had grabbed her wrist littered her skin. 

"in a bed, usually, you guys?" 

"er sorry but whats a bed? trolls sleep in pods surrounded by slime but i can sleep on the ground in a pinch." Joey examined Xefros again. He was covered in bruises and cuts from where he'd been covered in rubble. Most of his wounds had scabbed over by now, but he still seemed rather fragile. He was a little bit shorter than she was. His orange and yellow horns seemed fine. She wondered what they were made of. 

"huh. well beds are piles of blankets and pillows." It was pretty chilly out. She wished she had a blanket now. Goose bumps ran over her arms and legs. She was on an alien planet, surrounded by aliens and alien animals. Joey didn't know how one was supposed to react when faced with that, but she was pretty sure she was doing it wrong. 

"okay." Xefros didn't seem to know what to say to that. Joey didn't either. She sighed and leaned against Clarissa. How was Jude? She hoped that her silly brother was doing all right. Maybe Xefros's jerk friend Dammek was in her house making a mess of things. The warmth of Clarissa's soft body was relaxing, even if she was trying to stay alert. A few minutes later, she turned to look at the red symbol on Xefros's shirt. 

"you mentioned some sort of blood system, right?" she eventually asked. Joey was asking to break the silence, but she was also genuinely curious. If she was stuck on this backwards planet until further notice, she might as well learn more about it. The fact they were raised by animals and they had no adults on this planet was odd enough. 

"yeah i can Xplain it to you if thats what you want."

"definitely! i'm so confused." Xefros crossed his legs and pushed a stray lock of black hair out of his face. His golden eyes narrowed as if he was trying to figure out the best way to explain something complicated. 

"well, i'm a rustblood. red, burgundy. we tend to have telekinesis, but im not Xactly good at that." Joey's eyes widened. 

"really? you can move things with your mind? that's so... that's so..." She trailed off, looking for a good adjective to finish that sentence. "awesome!" Xefros took a bent spoon out of his sylladex. Joey reached out her hand and it brushed against his. He smiled nervously and dropped it into her hand. It started glowing with a faint red energy and moved a little bit from left to right. "wow."

"that's nothing. the most psychic lowbloods could send one of those huge drones flying in less than X seconds." Joey smiled encouragingly at the shy alien. "brownbloods, like the Tetriarch, have some control over animals. there's mustardbloods who're yellow and i don't know much about them. Xplosions might be part of it. those three classes are mostly known as lowbloods if the higherbloods are being polite. most of the time it's just gutterblood."

"i can't believe this culling thing. why don't more trolls rebel?"

"even outside of the culling, gutter bloods don't live very long. besides, the heiress and... the other one... have this lusus." Joey narrowed her eyes and took the book out of her sylladex. She found a page on the only fuchsia lusus. She closed it immediately. A strange feeling of dread and disgust at the creature's vast power came over her. She put it back. "let's talk about that later. Xamining all the reasons rebellion is futile could take all night."

"why do it, then?"

"i thought i knew." His face twisted into a strange emotion that she recognized all too well. That was the face of realizing that something or someone you admired wasn't what you thought they were. She'd felt it about her father and her babysitter. Both of them had let her down when she'd needed them most in different ways. 

"so... what's above a yellow blood?" she asked, trying to keep his mind on the terrible but familiar. 

"there's rumors about limebloods, but i've never met one. they supposedly had a lot of psychic abilities. the green ones are where the middle trolls start. they Xd to not have as many powers but are physically stronger and faster. olivebloods are incredibly stealthy and good at hunting. jadebloods Xd to the mother grub--"

"mother grub?"

"you don't -- oh. i'll Xplain later. teal is where the nobility begins. a lot of civil servants are teal. if you ever meet a blue blood or worse, run. the higher the caste the more violent. ceruleans are Xtremely dangerous and strong. indigos are worse. then you get to the purple bloods. run as fast as you can. they are sadistic clown worshippers. i've never encountered an ocean dweller-- they're either violet or fuchsia like our dearest heiress." He shook even worse than usual when he was talking about the purple bloods. 

"if Dammek is only one rank above you then why do you let him boss you around?"

"hah. everyone bosses disgusting rustbloods like me around." Joey rested her arm across Xefros's shoulder. Her other hand deftly examined the network of scars and fresh wounds running up Xefros's arm. 

"don't call yourself that, Xefros."

"why? everyone else does." 

"that's why you shouldn't." His loose shirt exposed scars from something that looked like it could've been a foot on his back. "what happened?" Xefros shrugged off her arm and pulled his legs into his chest. Joey dropped her hand. He mumbled something into his legs. "i'm sorry for prying." He shrugged. After a while, he let his grip around his legs relax. Joey awkwardly leaned deeper into Clarissa, who curled around the two of them. Her eyes fluttered. 

She didn't want to sleep on an alien planet, but she couldn't keep her exhaustion from taking over. 

Xefros wrapped his arms around her. Even though she was lost in space, sleeping in her new friend's arms felt like coming home. Her fears about her brother and the alien that was in her house seemed to fall away. The danger posed by the gray skinned and purple blooded princess was nothing in comparison to the strange bond between two different species of teenager.

"thanX for caring," he whispered as she drifted off to sleep. 

She dreamed of rainbow blood and a sphere headed man. A skull decorated with red swirls on its cheeks smiled and its golden tooth seemed to bite into Joey's leg. She screamed and she looked down. She saw lime blood run from olive skin. Tendrils of black and purple horrorterrors pulled at her skin. A demon with magical wands grinned at her, smoke pouring from her mouth. Impossible legions of a fuchsia blooded monster giving birth to the end of the world. Her new friend was crying with red tears and red blood mixing in between. The face of the man with a cue ball head mocked her, taking someone close to her away into his palace of green. 

Clear tears ran down her cheek as she dreamed of the future, the past, and infinite worlds separated by more than time and space combined. A human girl in a universe that created hers long ago and not yet was impossible. Except she was here.

**Author's Note:**

> I called the lususes Calliope and Andrew Hussie in my game. Feel free to comment with what you picked. :) also this is not intended to be romantic and I'm all for lesbian joey. feel free to read it that way though


End file.
